WTMG's Leo Faria: "That’s the beauty behind the Oblivion remaster. It is still janky, occasionally ugly, and featuring some inexcusable bugs, but the core game is so good, so damn immersive and entertaining, you will keep on playing it for hours on end. It’s an updated and (ever so slightly) improved way to experience a classic RPG that doesn’t feel like it’s already 19 years old. Grab an axe, improve your charisma stats, completely ignore the plot and the urgency behind the main critical path, and immerse yourself in the land of Cyrodiil. You’ll spend hundreds of hours doing so, probably up until Bethesda finally finishes up developing The Elder Scrolls 6… or another version of Skyrim."
Like a Mythic Dawn cultist popping out of a secret room to stab the Emperor in the back, a remaster of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has shown up out of nowhere, and it’s a dagger I’ve gladly thrown myself onto for over 80 hours (and counting) in less than a week. This Unreal-tinted glasses nostalgia trip modestly modernizes one of my all-time favorite open-world RPGs and had me teaming up with Sean Bean to close shut the jaws of Oblivion, helping the God of Madness with his, um, complicated mental health issues, rising to the top of every faction like I was angling to become Cyrodiil’s Valedictorian, and violating every single person’s personal space by getting way too close to them while talking.
This is the score I would give it too. A few QoL improvements and some much needed combat enhancements particularly for the camera allow it to be appreciated in the modern era. However the performance issues persist even on performance mode.
Are we just going to admit that bugs are a gameplay feature required for all Bethesda games, and therefore they won't get docked points for it?
Original designer Bruce Nesmith has admitted that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered's level scaling was a "mistake"
I do appreciate the changes to the levelling system in the remaster which lessens the hassle of min/max with regards to effects class skills have on attributes(missed these in Skyrim).
The level scaling is still a problem though as you end up with crappy uniques if you find them low level. They did fix this with regards to items from one of the DLCs but it should be across the board.
With its heavy emphasis on environmental storytelling, Oblivion Remastered proves the original game's world is just as much a character as its NPCs.
"is still janky, occasionally ugly, and featuring some inexcusable bugs"
" It doesn’t matter if you’re on High, Low, DLSS, FSR, with a 4080 or a 2070: the framerate will constantly fluctuate from 120fps to 20fps, for no apparent reason."
And the game writer went on to give it an 8...